“This is the real Palladion, Hock-en-bear-eeee,” whispers Helen, referring to the sacred sculpture carved from a stone which fell from heaven one day, thus showing Athena’s blessing over the city of Ilium. When the Palladion is stolen, so the century-old story goes, Troy will fall.
Theano and Hecuba stare Helen into silence. My former lover—well, my former one-night stand—dumps the contents of her bag on the table and we all sit on the wooden stools, staring at the Hades Helmet, morphing bracelet, taser baton, and QT medallion. Only the medallion looks like it might be worth anything. The rest of the stuff I’d probably pass over at a garage sale.
Hecuba speaks to Helen. “Tell this . . . man . . . that we must see if his story can be true. If these toys of his have any power.” Hector’s and Paris’s mother lifts the morphing bracelet.
I know she can’t activate it, but I still say, “That has only minutes of power in it. Don’t fool around with it.”
The old woman shoots me a scathing glance. Laodice picks up the taser baton and turns it in her pale hands. “This is the weapon you used to stun Patroclus?” she asks. It is the first time she’s spoken in my presence.
“Yes.”
“How does it work?”
I tell her the three spots I have to tap and twist to activate the wand. I’m certain that the thing is designed to work only when I’m holding it. Certainly the gods wouldn’t be so foolish as to leave the weapon usable for others if I lost it, even though the double tap and single twist are a safety mechanism of sorts. I start to explain to Laodice and the others that only I can use the gods’ tools.
Laodice aims the taser at my chest and taps the shaft of the wand again.
Once, when I was hiking with Susan in Brown County, Indiana, we were crossing a hilltop meadow when lightning struck just ten paces from me, knocking me off my feet, blinding me, and leaving me semiconscious for several minutes. We used to joke about that—about the odds against it—but the memory of the jolt used to make my mouth go dry.
This blast is worse.
It feels as if someone has hit me in the chest with a hot poker. I fly off my stool, land numbly on the stone floor, and remember spasming like an epileptic—my arms and legs kicking wildly—before I lose consciousness.
When I come to, hurting, my ears buzzing, my head aching, the four women are ignoring me, looking into the corner at nothing.
Four women? I thought there were five. I sit up and shake my head, trying to get my vision back in focus. Andromache’s missing. Perhaps she went for help, to find a healer. Maybe the women thought I was dead.
Suddenly Andromache flickers into visibility in the empty space where the others are looking. Hector’s wife pulls the Hades Helmet cowl from her shoulders and holds it out.
“The Helmet of Death works, just as the old tales say,” says Andromache. “Why would the gods give it to such as he?” She nods in my direction and drops the leather and metal cowl-helmet onto the table.
Theano holds up the QT medallion. “We can’t make this work,” she says. “Show us.” It takes me a fuzzy moment to realize that the priestess is speaking to me.
“Why should I?” I say, getting to my feet and leaning on the table. “Why should I help any of you?”
Helen comes around the table and puts her hand on my forearm. I pull my arm away.
“Hock-en-bear-eeee,” she purrs. “Don’t you know that the gods have sent you to us?”
“What are you talking about?” I look around the room.
“No, the gods can’t hear us in here,” says Helen. “The walls of this room are lined with lead. The gods can neither see nor hear through solid lead. This has been known for centuries.”
I squint around me. What the hell. Why not? Superman’s X-ray vision never worked through lead either. But why would there be a god-proof room in Athena’s temple?
Andromache steps closer. “Helen’s friend, Hock-en-bear-eeee, we—the women of Troy and Helen—have plotted for years to end this war. But the men—Achilles, the Argives, our own Trojan husbands and fathers—have power over us. They answer only to the gods. Now the gods have heard our most secret prayers and sent you as our instrument. With your help and our planning, we will change the course of events here, saving not only our city, our lives and our children’s lives, but also the destiny of mankind—freeing us from the rule of cruel and arbitrary deities.”
I shake my head again and actually laugh. “There’s a slight flaw in your logic, madame. Why would the gods send me as your instrument if your goal is to overthrow the gods? That makes no sense.”
The five Trojan women stare at me for a moment. Then Helen says, “There are more gods than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Hock-en-bear-eeee.”
I stare at her for a second, then decide it has to be a coincidence. Either that or I’m not hearing correctly. My chest still hurts and my muscles ache from the spasms the taser caused.
“Give me the tools,” I say, testing.
The women slide to me the Hades Helmet, the taser baton, the morphing bracelet, and the QT medallion. I lift the baton as if to hold them all at bay. “What’s your plan?” I ask.
“My husband never would have believed me if I’d reported to him that the goddess Aphrodite had appeared and taken Scamandrius and his nurse away to be held for ransom,” says Andromache. “Hector has served these gods all his life. He’s not the egomaniac that man-killer Achilles is. Hector would have thought that anything the gods did was only a test of him. Unless Aphrodite or another god were to kill our son in front of witnesses, in front of Hector himself. In that case, his rage would know no bounds. Why didn’t you kill my son?”
I have no words to answer that. So Andromache answers for me.
“You are a sentimental fool,” she snaps. “You say that Scamandrius will be dashed to his death on the rocks if you do not change the plans of the gods.”
“Yes.”
“And yet you refused to kill the child who already is fated to die, even though your entire plan to end this war and win your own battle with the gods depended upon it. You are weak, Hock-en-bear-eeee.”
“Yes,” I say.
Hecuba beckons me to sit, but I remain standing, taser baton in hand. “What’s your plan to end this war?” I ask. I’m almost afraid to ask. Would Andromache kill her own son to get her way? I look into her eyes and I’m even more afraid.
“We will tell you our plan,” says old Queen Hecuba, “but first you must prove to us that these last two god-toys work.” She gestures to the morphing bracelet and the medallion.
Watching them all carefully, I slip the bracelet on. The indicator tells me that there’s less than three minutes of actual morph time remaining. I use its scanning functioning to look at Hecuba, then trigger the morphing function.
The real Hecuba disappears as I assume her quantum probability wave space. “Believe me now?” I say in Hecuba’s voice. I raise my wrist—Hecuba’s wrist—and show them the morphing bracelet. I bring the taser baton out from her gown. The four remaining women, including Helen, gasp and step back, as shocked as if I’d cut the old dowager down with a short sword. More shocked, probably—death by swords, they know all too well.
I drop out of morph and Hecuba flicks back into existence on her side of the room. She blinks, although I know she’s had no sense of time passing, and the five women gabble together. I check the bracelet’s virtual indicator. Two minutes twenty-eight seconds of morph time left.
I slip the QT medallion chain around my neck. At least this device doesn’t seem to have any power limits. “You want me to QT out of here and then back to show you that this also works?” I ask.
Hecuba has recovered her composure. “No,” she says. “All of our plans—yours and ours—will depend upon your ability to travel to Olympos undetected and to return. Can you take one of us there now?”